Data cells or formulaic cells, such as cells of a spreadsheet or calculator application, allow a user to build formulas or enter data in tables or charts. The data and formulas may have dependencies such as dependencies on other cells, dependencies on other formulas, dependencies on lists, dependencies on user-defined functions, etc. The use of functions and dependencies in a spreadsheet makes spreadsheets a powerful tool because a user can build complex formulas and analyze a wide range of data.
In addition, the cells may be used for generating various types of tables and charts such as a PIVOTTABLE spreadsheet report generated in the EXCEL software program produced by MICROSOFT CORPORATION of Redmond, Wash. A PIVOTTABLE is an interactive table that quickly combines and compares large amounts of data. The rows and columns may be rotated to see different summaries of the source data, and the details may be displayed for areas of interest. Such table reports are interactive, allowing for changes in the view of the data to see more details or calculate different summaries, such as counts or averages. In a PIVOTTABLE report, each column or field in the source data becomes a PIVOTTABLE field that summarizes multiple rows of information. A data field (e.g., Sum of Sales) provides the values that are summarized. After the report is created, it may be customized to focus on certain information, change the layout, and drill down to display more detailed data. Furthermore, conditional formatting may be applied to the data to provided additional information. Conditional formatting refers to changing the format of one or more data cells based on a condition. For example, conditional formatting may be applied that highlights the top ten entries in a column of data. In this example, the formatting is the highlighting, and the condition is that the data cell is a member of the top ten. A range of conditional formatting may be applied with various conditions applying to formatting a single spreadsheet or document.